If Boehner and the right wing were to agree to Obama's plan, there would be cuts in benefits to Social Security, along with Medicare and Medicaid and food stamps and 100 other programs vital to the most vulnerable among us.
Is that what you support?
About State of the Union
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Cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and 100 other programs needed by the 99% isn't the will of the people, but Obama apparently believes it is. He is the one who put Social Security on the table.
About State of the Union
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Not only did I live it, I can provide citations that back it up. From the Bureau of Labor and Statistics:
1970 - 4.9
1971 - 5.9
1972 - 5.6
1973 - 4.9
1974 - 5.6
1975 - 8.5
1976 - 7.7
1977 - 7.1
1978 - 6.1
1979 - 5.8
2008 - 5.8
2009 - 9.3
2010 - 9.6
2011 - 8.9
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When politicians say that "Social Security is the third rail of politics", they mean it with a hostility that should be reserved for their Corporate Masters. You don't see politicians putting campaign finance and election reform on their agenda from year to year as you do their continuing assaults on social safety net programs for the People.
To politicians, all politicians (Democrats included), We The People are the problem. If only they didn't have to deal with making us happy to get our votes that keep them employed. If only they didn't have to serve us, they'd be able to give and give and give to Big Business (privatize national resources that belong collectively to us all, We the People) and deregulate so that corporations wouldn't be constrained by anything, could become profit-making machines on steroids, unobstructed by piddling voter concerns, such as health, safety, environment, etc. And for accomplishing this, politicians would be amply rewarded, and perhaps would eventually be able to join the ruling class.
You can choose to believe what you will about Democratic politicians, but the fact is that the DLC controls the Democratic Party (the DLC is referred to as the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, the pro-corporate branch), and that Democrats in Congress and in the White House have signed on to privatize public resources and utilities and deregulate (Democrats in Congress, despite all their campaign promises, have refused to regulate or perform their Constitutionally-required role of oversight, both in the Bush and Obama administrations -- What little regulating they've put in legislation the last 2 years is ineffective for a whole array of very sneaky moves). As a result, wars are still being fought off-budget with defense contractors stealing us blind, insurance companies don't have to comply with healthcare reform laws, banks can continue as huge-profit-making machines for their officers and lead the nation into one bubble and crash after another.
You can choose to think of Obama and his intentions in whatever way makes you happy. What you can't do is explain how any of what Obama's done these past four years has been in the People's and not the Corporations' interests.
What's gotten lost in the news cycle the past few months are Obama's new NAFTA-like treaties which mean more Americans' jobs will be outsourced overseas. And then there's the 'Super Congress' (and its plan for gutting Social Security and Medicare), along with the Dream Act ticking along (which means a flood of immigrants working for slave wages).
We The People are being transformed, from sheep to sacrificial lambs.
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Politicians WANT a high deficit so that they can create a fiscal crisis that forces us to cut vital safety net programs. It's what Grover Norquist (president of Americans for Tax Reform, and George W. Bush's once-a-week lunch buddy for the 8 years of the Bush-Cheney Administration) meant when he said,"Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub."
During the 2000 election, when Gore was talking about "lock box" and Bush was campaigning on tax cuts ("We gotta get the money out of Washington or else the politishuns'll spend it!"), I was writing about how Bush and Grover Norquist intended to bankrupt the country as a back door to ending the Great Society.
I was writing about conservatives frustration over their futile attempts to end Social Security and other New Dea/Great Society programs, and how even their own (Republican politicians in Congress) would do it directly because it was so popular with the People. It would end their political careers if they went at ending Social Security with a head-on vote. They would have to go about it indirectly, lining up the ducks in a row, for the step-by-step dismantling of the singlemost effective program in the history of the US for lifting people out of poverty.
The way they would do it would be to get the nation into so much debt, into bankruptcy, that there would be no money left in SocialSecurity. That's how they would kill it.
When GeorgeWBush got into the White House after the contentious 2000 election (when Republicans stole the election), when Bush rammed those tax cuts through, no Democrats talked about "what about if we need that money for a rainy day?" Or "find ourselves in a war?"
Around 2006, when Democrats won the election and talk was rampant about Bush's legacy, when even conservatives were repudiating Bush, Bush was saying that he was certain he'd be vindicated in history as " a great conservative".
Even conservatives didn't see what he was talking about (that what Bush is counting on is the end of the Great Society programs, like Social Security and Medicare, vindicating him as both a great president and a great conservative).
By the way, not one journalist asked Bush why he thought he'd be vindicated by history; they still don't, as he's made the rounds of his book tour since leaving the White House.
Democratic politicians aren't stupid, by the way. They knew what Bush and Republicans were up to, and they let it happen.
Why? Why would Democratic politicians want to end Social Security and Medicare?
KEEP READING
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This subject is a waste of time because 1) it's members of Congress who set their own salaries, and 2) most of them do not rely on paychecks from their elected offices for support. Most of them are wealthy, independently of their public office. And they're never going to need their Social Security pension to survive, or Medicare or Medicaid for that matter.
About Barack Obama
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(Reuters) - The U.S. economy grew faster than previously thought in the third quarter, helped by exports and government spending, but a sluggish global demand and belt-tightening by Washington looks set to put on the brakes again.
Other data on Thursday showed factory activity in the mid-Atlantic region picked up this month, while home resales in November were the best in three years, indicating the economy retained some vigor early in the fourth quarter.
However, a rise in first-time applications for unemployment aid last week suggested job growth remains modest.
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